Feedback Thoughts

Feedback Thoughts

The first article I read about feedback for learning was "A fixed mindset could be holding you back". This article ventures into the familiar topic of fixed mindset vs growth mindset, a topic i'm familiar with due to my research of Carol Dweck. The article starts off by talking about how the way we raise our children is potentially harming them in the long run, it argues that by praising children for everything they do they are put in a fixed mindset which prohibits them from growing when faced with a difficult obstacle to overcome. This is due to the short-sighted thought that praising children for everything they do will give them robust self esteem when in reality its just made them stubborn and brittle when faced with a challenge and when they become adults it can lead to an inability to take criticism and a habit of being defensive over such feedback which can greatly limit a person from growing mentally. 

The article does go on to mention that you can learn to have a growth mindset. The writer points out how in hospitals when a mistake is made there is no finger pointing or sweeping under the rug, the team comes together to solve the mistake and learn from it for the next time they face the same problem again. I think this is a very apt analysis, in the TV show "House M.D" (which is about doctors curing sick patients) the characters go through this exact process every episode and they grow from it every time, so for me its very easy to see what the writer was trying to say by making this analysis.

The second article I read was "Why Its So Hard To Hear Negative Feedback" by Tim Herrera. This article was very interesting to me. It starts off by describing the scenario of a boss questioning an employee over an apparent mistake they made and the boss is looking to give the employee an earful about it. The article ponders the possibility that this usually stressful situation could be looked at as an opportunity to grow and as something to be craved.

This mindset can apparently be trained and the article references  TED podcast by Adam Grant as something that suggests this. Its definitely intriguing to think that we can train ourselves into seeing usually stressful situations as something that we can improve as a person from. From my reading of these articles I've learned to try and take criticisms positively instead of seeing them as something negative and I think the concept that we can decide to do that is what inspires the ability to do so, because why wouldn't you want to grow as a person.

(The aforementioned Adam Grant)

Source: ted.com